


what we hide and what we show

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: What We Are (FMA Angst Week 2018) [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Denial, F/M, FMA Angst Week 2018, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-18 22:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15496362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: For FMA angst week. Day 6: DeceptionIt’s over and they’re together and everything’s fine.





	what we hide and what we show

**Author's Note:**

> **Deception**  
>  (noun)  
> \--the action of deceiving* someone.
> 
> * **Deceive**  
>  (verb)  
> \--(of a person) cause (someone) to believe something that is not true, typically in order to gain some personal advantage.

He told Roy that he would swallow every horrible thing he did in Ishval. Gracia deserves it, after all, deserves someone without bloody hands or nightmares that haunt them or a piece of the battlefield branded into their skull. Maes is not going to let that hurt her more than it already has. She has already spent the last few months worrying herself raw over him, over whether or not he’d make it home—

But it’s over now. It’s over and they’re together and everything’s fine.

The kettle whistles. Maes jumps and reaches for his knives, expecting gunshots and snipers and—

There’s nothing there.

Everything’s fine.

“Are you okay?” Gracia asks, touching a hand to his cheek. Her fingers are white and smooth as snow, not golden and dark like the desert sand.

“Of course,” he says, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong. He smiles, perfect and pretty and pearly white teeth, then kisses her cheek. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head, darling. Everything’s fine.”

Everything’s fine.

They get married in a flurry of white tulle and silken flowers. There’s vanilla champagne and bright, chiming laughter and Gracia’s lips taste like ambrosia. She is an absolute vision, her lips painted sugar-pink and her eyes sparkling like cut jewels. He doesn’t understand how he could be so lucky to have found a stunning woman like this. Every moment is bliss, euphoria, the little piece of heaven he has been clutching so tight for so long that he can hardly believe it has come to fruition.

“To Maes Hughes.” Roy, the best man, holds his champagne flute up high. Maes has noticed that his friend has grown a particular taste for the bottle and makes a mental note to check into that at a later date. “The best friend a guy could have, and the strongest man I know. May the rest of your lives be filled with happiness.”

Hell.

A couple years later Gracia tells him she’s pregnant and he is absolutely _ecstatic_. He brags to everyone about how beautiful his wife is when she’s pregnant, about how absolutely perfect the baby is going to be, how he can’t _wait_ to be a father.

“Hughes, for the _thousandth_ time,” growls Roy over the line, “ _stop calling me at work_.”

His daughter tumbles into this harsh, all-too-indifferent world with a high, keening cry. Every murmur and whimper from her tugs hard at his chest, and he cannot help but _marvel_ at this little creature who both he and Gracia worked to create. Her tiny, delicate hands reach out to grasp his outheld finger, peering up at him with rheumy eyes and a quiver in her lower lip. His heart clenches tightly at the sight of her, of this marvelous little beauty, this absolute _angel_ who has come down from earth in a bundle of white linen swaddling cloth. Gracia cradles her in her arms, flushed and her bangs plastered to her forehead and never looking more beautiful than right now.

“I love you,” he says, dizzy beyond all explanation. Elysia, they decide to call her. “Paradise”. His  _daughter_ , who is _beautiful_ , and _wonderful_ , and _perfect_. This is the greatest moment of his _life._

Except—

He dreams about corpses lining the streets while he talks casually to his acquaintances. He dreams about Gran shooting Fessler point-blank while he watches, then tactfully looks away so he can have deniability. He dreams about Bradley ordering Logue Lowe’s execution without so much as batting an eyelash.

He dreams about pulling the trigger over and over and over. Mothers and wives and sisters and daughters and children.

“I’m fine,” he says when he wakes up in the middle of the night and lies beside Gracia, unable to fall back asleep but unwilling to disturb her by getting up. He just stares into the darkness and tries not to think about anything.

Her lovely olive eyes search his face. He wonders what she’s looking for. “Really?”

He grins brightly and jubilantly like he always does before he kissing her on the cheek. And honestly, how could he not be okay, when he is married to the most beautiful woman in the world, when he has the most beautiful daughter a man could ask for sleeping in the room just next to them? “Really.”

She relaxes, smiling back in that beautiful, graceful fashion of hers. “Okay.”

Sometimes he wakes to Elysia crying, with his heart hammering and his every instinct screaming that something is wrong, that he needs to protect her, that there is danger and _where is his gun_ —

Then he remembers that this isn’t Ishval.

Everything is fine.

 _The strongest man I know_ , Roy said.

He hears gunshots in the honking of cars. When he hears children laughing in the streets, he thinks of little kids with bullet holes in their foreheads. The smoke from distant factories reminds him of fires burning on the horizon. He’s assigned a job in Intelligence and throws himself into it.

Approximately five months after Elysia is born, he gets news that Roy recruited a twelve-year-old kid into the military. A _motherfucking_ _twelve-year-old_.

“What the _fuck_ Mustang?” he demands, and it is the first time he has cursed so severely since his daughter was born. His head throbs and he imagines Elysia—Elysia in a uniform at twelve-years-old and following wretched orders and god forbid, _out on the fucking battlefield_. “You recruited a kid—a _kid_!”

A sigh crackles across the line. “I know.”

Something like rage, only blacker and more jagged, bolts through him. “What the _hell_ were you thinking?”

There is a pause. Then, voice low, Roy says, “I know how this might sound, but... believe me when I say I’m actually doing him a favor.”

 _Favor_! Maes slams the phone down so hard he might actually have broken the receiver and does not speak to Roy again for two whole months.

But then he actually _meets_ the kid, and shit, there’s something fractured in those golden eyes. They’re the eyes of someone who has seen a little too much, who has seen the dark underbelly of the world and got crushed beneath the weight of it. He’s seen that same look far too many times, in every soldier that has come out of the war. Even in his own fucking mirror.

There’s fire there, too, though. When the kid starts talking about his goal, his search for some alchemy thing that Maes has never heard of, he thinks he understands what Roy meant. He calls him up and offers an apology, but Roy acts like nothing happened. Maes is not sure if Roy is being graceful about the issue or just avoiding it, but hey, he’s never been one to discount the practicality of avoidance. It’s what helped him survive Ishval in the first place.

That night, Maes does not sleep. At all. He stares up at the ceiling and thinks about Elysia’s eyes becoming jaded and hard far too soon. He thinks about Gracia waiting for his letters to arrive, peering at him late at night while he smiles and laughs and pretends he doesn’t have bags under his eyes.

 _Do you really think you can hold her?_ Roy had asked him on the battlefield with eyes that looked better suited to a corpse. _You and your bloodstained hands?_

Maes clenches his jaw tight. Yes. He can. Because Gracia deserves it and Elysia deserves it and he’ll be damned if he lets either of them see that side of him. Hell, he’s already managed to convince Roy—Roy, who sees everything and through everyone—of his own strength, then surely he can convince them.

Maybe he can finally convince himself, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a very big problem with the official spelling of "Elicia" versus the way it is pronounced in both animes. The "cia" is pronounced as "sha", so "Elicia" sounds a lot like "Alicia". But the anime pronounces it "Elysia" and I honestly feel like that name is more meaningful because it's derived from "Elysium", which in Greek mythology was sort of like paradise in the afterlife. Hell, the name literally _means_ "happiness" and I 100% believe that Hughes would name his precious daughter that.
> 
> That's all.


End file.
